Monday, March 30, 2015

Jack McDevitt takes a pretty stock standard science fiction trope and manages to make something bigger than expected out of it. Ancient Shores teems with deep, realistic characters, and a harrowing, yet optimistic look at how humanity reacts to fear.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

In order for a mashup to work, there needs to be harmony. Harmony can come out of unexpected places. Nickolas Cook misses this mark by quite some distance. He manages not only to fail at matching Lewis Carroll's wit and charm, but goes further, ruining the original cleverness and creating what feels like a desperate, zombie-obsessed madlib.

Friday, March 27, 2015

I can deal with books that are skeptical about science, and the way science is being used. I can deal with books with soft science, as long as they don't try to justify it. What I can't deal with is a book that gets all the science terribly wrong, then proceeds to go on an anti-science vendetta. Of course you think science is awful! You don't understand any of it. Spoilers in the review.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Memoirs should be allowed to be a bit self-absorbed, but in this case, it feels kind of inappropriate. Especially considering it feels like Laura Bates didn't actualize a lot of what she was seeing. However, it's impossible to say that she didn't have a very good impact on some folks.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

After reading Among Others, I felt like I needed to reread Bridge to Terabithia. I hadn't read it since I was a kid, and I'm kind of saddened to find that it isn't quite the story in my head. Either way, I'm glad I reread it. Spoilers in review.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

In a world where time travel is used by academics to uncover the past, a group of young historians head off to study WWII. Something is clearly going wrong, but no one seems to notice until it hits them squarely on the head.

Friday, March 20, 2015

So I keep mentioning the reading challenge I'm doing (or at least I feel like I am...) and I've linked to the copy on 9gag. I think it might have originally been from Pop Sugar, but to investigate that further would involve reading Pop Sugar...

I stumbled on the challenge via HabitRPG, where someone set up a challenge in the Legendary Book Club of Habitica guild (that I run and is currently reading Blackout, by Connie Willis). It's made it super easy to keep track of the challenge and I get rewarded for it. I only have a few left to tick off at this point... More info on the challenge and my status after the jump.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

China Miéville is best known for his novels, but in short stories he's able to play with his craft in ways that wouldn't work in longer fiction. He left me wanting and unfulfilled time and time again, but simultaneously positive there was no other way for things to end.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

I was thrilled when I stumbled upon this noir detective cyberpunk novel, often ranked as one of the hidden scifi gems. I was especially excited when I realized there was a trans character! Then I remembered that this book was published in 1987. I quickly became less enthused.

Monday, March 16, 2015

This is a Great American Novel, a novel of manners, a bildungsroman, a romance, historical fiction, and very, very long. It is a tale of the inevitable fall of the status quo, a tale of rebuilding, and a tale of loss once again. But mostly, it's very, very long.

Friday, March 13, 2015

A nice, but not super in-depth bestiary, covering yokai, traditional Japanese monsters. Its worth it for Tatsuya Morino's illustrations, which are supplemented with older, more traditional pieces of art.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

What is the worst thing you can do to a grief-stricken windower who has a death wish? Grant him eternal life. The only problem is, when you mess with forces you don't truly understand, you almost always get unintended consequences.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Making sense is a stylistic choice. A stylistic choice that this book firmly opted out of. That’s not to say that’s always a bad thing. There are a few books where “not making sense” works rather well. This is not one of them.

The Blogger

A life-long avid reader, especially of speculative fiction, Ryan usually has a book lying around somewhere. The child of an English PhD, he also has strong opinions scattered about. As his physical disability made it more and more difficult to partake in other forms of leisure, his childhood predilection for prose once again began to consume his life.